VACCINES ARE BIG BUSINESS, WORTH BILLIONS OF DOLLARS ON AN INTERNATIONAL BASIS

According to international market reports, the vaccines marketis increasing from US$5.7 billion in 2002 to US$49.27 billion by 2022.[1]

So from 2002 to 2022 the vaccine market is predicted to increase more than eight-fold! This is astonishing.

And this increasingly lucrative market is receiving little or nothing in the way of independent and critical analysis…

Is all this vaccination really necessary and beneficial to individuals, or is there some very lucrative over-vaccination going on, with the sanction of governments and the medical/scientific establishment?

Is the ever-increasing list of vaccine products being seen as the saviour for pharmaceutical companies facing the patent cliff?[2]

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has indicated we are experiencing a vaccine boom.[3] An article published in New Scientist in late 2011 says: “No longer the unprofitable runt of the pharmaceutical family, vaccines are fast becoming the industry’s breadwinner…While the rest of the pharmaceutical sector struggles to keep afloat as expiring patents send profits plummeting, the vaccine industry has become remarkably buoyant”.[4]

In 2009, Associated Press reported: “Vaccines now are viewed as a crucial path to growth, as drug companies look for ways to offset a slowing of prescription-medicine sales amid intensifying generic competition and government pressure to restrain prices under the federal health-care overhaul”.[5]

Vaccines are the booming new market for pharmaceutical companies[6], it appears the floodgates opened in the 1980s when the United States protected vaccine manufacturers from liability.[7]

There are forces working very hard to set up a massive international vaccine market in developed and developing countries. Relationships between the vaccine industry and organisations such as the WHO, US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), US National Institutes of Health (NIH), the GAVI Alliance, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation etc need to be scrutinised.

Are people being properly informed about the risks and benefits of these vaccines? Is legally valid ‘informed consent’ being obtained before vaccination?

With vaccine manufacturers sizing up the potential for lucrative global vaccine markets, industry-funded ‘peer-reviewed literature’ being used to promote vaccine products, and entrepreneurial scientists lining up for vaccine royalties, there are strong vested interests to consider. There are also questions about the long-term efficacy of some vaccines, inadequately researched possible adverse reactions to vaccination, and the, in effect, limited liability of international vaccine manufacturers.

Debate on vaccination has been polarised between ‘pro’ and ‘anti’ vaccination factions, with any questioning of the vaccination status quo being regarded as taboo. There appears to be little consultation with the general public about additions to vaccination schedules, and there are concerns about potential conflicts of interest of government health advisors in this area.[9]

The lack of transparency and accountability in the promotion of vaccine products is unacceptable. Government bodies are using coercive policies to press vaccines of questionable value on mass populations of children and adults and this must be challenged.

It is now taken as a given that ‘vaccination is good’, ‘vaccination is safe’, ‘you can’t have too many vaccines’. Paul Offit, Chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases and the Director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, is famous for his flippant remark that a baby’s immune system could handle as many as 10,000 vaccines, and upping the ante by saying it was probably “closer to 100,000”.[10]

Paediatrician Paul Offit’s cavalier attitude contrasts quite markedly with the more considered opinion of Ronald Schultz, Professor and Chair of the Department of Pathobiological Sciences, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and an expert in companion animal vaccines.

While Professor Schultz acknowledges that “vaccination should be considered an important medical practice”he also cautions on the over-use of vaccines: “I tell practitioners that vaccines are drugs, albeit biological drugs. I remind them that they would not consider it good medicine to give an unnecessary pharmaceutical drug on a recurring basis. I think it is even worse to give a vaccine, or biological drug, that isn’t necessary. The possible adverse consequences of a vaccine generally far outweigh the adverse consequences of a pharmaceutical drug. A pharmaceutical drug is usually much more restricted in its action. However, each time we stimulate an immune response, we have to look at the effect on all body systems—not only on antibody responses or cell-mediated immunity, but also on interactions with the endocrine system and the nervous system.”[11]

There are interesting comparisons to be made between companion animal vaccination and human vaccination. For instance, veterinary academics and veterinarians have raised concern about over-vaccination of companion animals and its possible connection with immune-mediated hemolytic anemia, thrombocytopenia, polyarthritis, atopy, chronic allergies, asthma etc.[12] Are there lessons here for human vaccination? For example, could there be a possible connection with over-vaccination and allergies, which have been reported to have hit “epidemic proportions“[13,14,15,16,17] in Australia, and other health problems in humans? While it may be difficult to prove a connection, surely it would be prudent to reduce unnecessary vaccination to avoid any risk?

While international dog and cat vaccination guidelineswarn that we should decrease companion animal vaccination, i.e. “we should aim to reduce the ‘vaccine load’ on individual animals in order to minimize the potential for adverse reactions to vaccine products”[18], vaccination of humans isincreasingat a startling rate.

Professor Schultz is an author of the companion animal vaccination guidelines, which acknowledge that“there is gross under-reporting of vaccine-associated adverse events which impedes knowledge of the ongoing safety of these products”.[19]While these animal vaccination guidelines are compromised in that they are industry-funded, they are nevertheless a groundbreaking initiative, with their concept of categorising ‘core’, ‘non-core’ and ‘not recommended’ vaccines.

With the increasing number of human vaccines coming onto the market,it’s time to adopt the cautious attitude exhibited by experts in animal vaccination, and critically consider the worth of individual vaccines, and the potentially deleterious consequences of over-vaccinating humans with a multitude of vaccine products throughout life.

“But surely the fundamental promise we make when we actively solicit individuals and exhort them to accept preventive interventions must be that, on average, they will be the better for it. Accordingly, the presumption that justifies the aggressive assertiveness with which we go after the unsuspecting healthy must be based on the highest level of randomized evidence that our preventive manoeuvre will, in fact, do more good than harm. Without evidence from positive randomized trials (and, better still, systematic reviews of randomized trials) we cannot justify soliciting the well to accept any personal health intervention. There are simply too many examples of the disastrous inadequacy of lesser evidence as a basis for individual interventions among the well: supplemental oxygen for healthy premies (causing retrolental fibroplasia), healthy babies sleeping face down (causing SIDS), thymic irradition in healthy children, and the list goes on.” [20] (Emphasis added.)

Also considerProfessor Schultz’s warning that:“Vaccines are medical products that should only be given if needed and only as often as is necessary to provide protection from diseases that are a risk to the health of the animal. If a vaccine that is not necessary causes an adverse reaction that would be considered an unacceptable medical procedure, thus use only those vaccines that are needed and use them only as often as needed.”[21]

VACCINATION RECOMMENDATIONS MUST BE TRANSPARENTLY EVIDENCE-BASED

Aggressive marketing by the pharmaceutical industry and industry-affiliated ‘experts’, including lobbying for compulsory vaccination with vaccines of dubious value (e.g. HPV and annual flu vaccines), is threatening citizens’ autonomy.

It’s time there was an investigation into the relationships between governments, the vaccine industry, and the industry’s handmaidens in the scientific/medical establishment, but who can we trust to do that? The mainstream media has generally been completely useless on this matter, and incapable of providing critical analysis, merely supporting the status quo.

Where are the whistleblowers?

Citizens must be allowed to have a rational debate on this important subject to ensure public confidence in vaccination practice. All vaccination recommendations must be transparently evidence-based.

[1] A recent vaccines market report notes the global vaccines market is expected to reach US$49.27 billion by 2022 from US$34.30 billion in 2017. A FierceVaccines report published in 2012 notes ten years previously, the vaccine market sat at US$5.7 billion. Now [2012], that market has soared to US$27 billion. So it seems from 2002 to 2022 the vaccines market will increase from US$5.7 billion to US$49.27 billion.